I will certainly grant you the point that corruption went back to before the Communist and, for that matter, to before the tsars (Donald Kingsbury traces it to the period of Mongol rule in The Moon Goddess and the Son). But Nietzsche makes a relevant point here: the explanation of how something came into being is not the same as the explanation of why it exists now, or what its current function is. We hear, for example, with the aid of adapted bits of jawbone.
What I am saying about corruption under the Soviets is that in fact it needed to be practiced and tolerated, because it was the only way to keep the Soviet economy going. The Soviet bureaucracy was too clunky and inflexible. Successful plant managers needed to be able to use unofficial channels, or to have employees who could do it for them. This may have represented a new payoff for corruption that already existed in tsarist society, certainly. But I think that the Soviet system was much more productive with its combination of bureaucratic planning and corruption than it could have been with only bureaucratic planning. Do you think this is a misinterpretation, and if so, why?
And presumably corruption in present-day Russia has still different functions and payoffs. I'm not looking for a timeless ahistorical essence of corruption; I'm talking about what role it played in the specific historical circumstances of the Soviet system.
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Date: 2010-04-04 03:36 pm (UTC)What I am saying about corruption under the Soviets is that in fact it needed to be practiced and tolerated, because it was the only way to keep the Soviet economy going. The Soviet bureaucracy was too clunky and inflexible. Successful plant managers needed to be able to use unofficial channels, or to have employees who could do it for them. This may have represented a new payoff for corruption that already existed in tsarist society, certainly. But I think that the Soviet system was much more productive with its combination of bureaucratic planning and corruption than it could have been with only bureaucratic planning. Do you think this is a misinterpretation, and if so, why?
And presumably corruption in present-day Russia has still different functions and payoffs. I'm not looking for a timeless ahistorical essence of corruption; I'm talking about what role it played in the specific historical circumstances of the Soviet system.